OK Go rocks! I found this band through a post on NRO’s the Corner and they are awesome. The first video is from their first album, Oh No, which is a pretty straightforward power-pop record (for an interesting story about the group’s videos and the music biz in general check out this Op-Ed NY Times piece by the lead singer). The second is from their latest effort released this year, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, which is very eclectic, very cool and completely different from the previous album. Anyway, I’ve been listening to both albums non-stop for the last two weeks. Enjoy.
Inspiration
First Day Of School
Today was my oldest daughter’s first day of Kindergarten. My wife stays home with both my daughters (ages 5 and 4) and has ever since they were born. Needless to say, she had mixed emotions today. Excited to see her baby take that next big step…and apprehensive and sad to see her baby take that next big step.
So we get to the school and escort my daughter to her room to make sure she gets settled in. The teacher (who we had met last week at “Meet The Teacher” night) was talking to a group of parents and said “I have to admit that I’m the teacher that you’ve heard about who accidentally let a student get on the bus when he was supposed to be picked up by his parents last year”. Uh…great…thanks for putting all of us first-timers at ease. But my daughter was in line and ready when we came to pick her up.
My wife said that today was the longest day of her life. We (me, my wife and my youngest daughter) ran some errands today and went to some fun places so that my youngest would have a special day too. Approximately every 15 minutes my wife would ask what time it was. But overall she handled the day pretty well.
The most touching part of the day happened this morning when we were walking up to the school. My youngest girl was having almost as hard a time as my wife. She and her older sister have spent pratically every day together for the last four years. We could tell she was going to miss her closest friend. As we walked across the lawn my youngest daughter spied a little patch of buttercups and went and picked two of them. She handed the shorter one to her sister and said “Here, you take the small one and it will remind you of me. I’ll keep the big one to remind me of you.”
Everyone together now. Awwwwwww…
Oh The Humanity!
As a proud owner of a Taylor 414ce (a much less expensive model than Dave Carroll owns I’m sure) I join Dave in condemning United Airlines or anyone else who would damage one of these beautiful instruments and not live up to their liability by fully compensating the owner for the loss (which of course should include a substantial amount for pain and suffering).
My Taylor
Obama Vs Obama
I love it when politicians get caught in the stupid s— they say
And as an extra added bonus, here’s some Star Wars/Obama humor for you today:
Amazing!
I’ve seen several posts lately displaying things that seemingly took Herculean amounts of patience to accomplish. This one takes the cake – a paper castle complete with electric lights, monorail system and Ferris wheel (more pictures at the link).
Congressional Motors Brings You…
…The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition!
Funny stuff.
Royale With Cheese
The following was posted by Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard. The last line is true genius.
In the course of Donald Morrison’s review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger, we learn that McDonald’s is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea, but nonetheless, it feels like a major triumph for American culture and cuisine. I once ate at the McDonald’s right next to the Arc de Triomphe. My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.
Magnificent Monday Quotes – One Great Quote
I can’t remember when I first stumbled across this one…but it’s a doozy.
“He is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Self-effacing, self-forgetting, still he is a killer. . . All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” — D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
Magnificent Monday Quotes – Anglosphere Edition
Since I’m currently reading The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon, I thought that I would do a post of quotes about and from the Anglosphere.
“God bless America. God save the Queen. God defend New Zealand and thank Christ for Australia.”– Russell Crowe
“Seldom have so few done so much for so many” – Winston Churchill
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will Lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.” – William Somerset Maugham
“None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.” – John Milton
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” – Thomas Paine
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand?
Sir Walter Scott
Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,
Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,
We pledge to our native soil.
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.
Rudyard Kipling
Magnificent Monday Quotes – George F. Will Edition
“A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.”
“A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible ‘lifestyles’ turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.”
“Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”
“As advertising blather becomes the nation’s normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.”
“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”
“Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one’s friends.”
“Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.”
“Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.”
“Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
“If you seek [Alexander] Hamilton’s monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.”
“If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.”
“In the lexicon of the political class, the word “sacrifice” means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.”
“Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it – short-term pain for long-term gain.”
“Pessimism is as American as apple pie – frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.”
“Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.”
“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”
“Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout ‘Bang!'”
“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”
“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”
“The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.”
“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.”
“Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes.”
“Voters don’t decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.”
“World War II was the last government program that really worked.”
My Head Just Exploded! 